In the event that a major crisis or emergency strikes the United States, you are not going to be able to eat your gold and silver. If we get into a situation where supermarkets get cleaned out and food supplies get very tight, you are going to wish that you had stored some things away for your family. Now don’t get me wrong – I actually love gold and silver.

I believe that they are both going to multiply in price during the years ahead. I particularly love silver for a couple of reasons. Unlike gold, silver is used in thousands upon thousands of different consumer products, so the physical supply is constantly diminishing. And historically, silver comes out of the ground at about a 10 to 1 ratio compared to gold, but right now the price of gold is about 65 times the price of silver. At some point there is going to be a massive adjustment there.

But if you just rely on accumulating gold and silver and you never store up any food, you could end up deeply regretting that choice someday.

If things get bad enough, people are not going to want to trade you their precious food no matter how much gold and silver you may have.

When a real crisis arrives, priorities change very rapidly. When you realize that you can’t feed your family, the need for basic supplies become extremely important. Just check out what is happening in Venezuela right now…

Alvaro Villarueda starts his morning the same way every day — putting in a call to his friend who has a friend who works at a Caracas, Venezuela, supermarket.

Today, he’s looking for sugar, and he’s asking his friend if he knows if any shipments have arrived. As he talks on the phone, his wife Lisbeth Nello, is in the kitchen.

There are 10 mouths to feed every day in this family — five of them children. The two youngest are still in diapers.

“The things that are the scarcest are actually what we need the most,” Nello says. “Flour, cooking oil, butter, milk, diapers. I spent last week hunting for diapers everywhere. The situation is really tough for basic goods.”

And the truth is that what is happening in Venezuela is just a very small preview of what is going to happen in much of the world during the years ahead.

In such an environment, people become extremely desperate, and desperate people do desperate things.

That is why self-defense needs to be another high priority for preppers. When desperate people in search of supplies get desperate enough to break into your home, things can get Medieval very rapidly.

For example, one homeowner in Detroit was recently forced to use a hammer to confront a man that had broken into his home late at night…

Police say an elderly man fended off a home intruder by hitting him on the head with a hammer.

On Sunday, March 9, 82-year-old George Bradford was asleep when he was woken up by the screams of his daughter and granddaughter.

Someone had broken into their house through a basement window.

“I could hear him walking up the stairs. … I had my choice to get ready,” Bradford tells FOX 2′s Andrea Isom. He says he went into the kitchen and got a hammer from the drawer.

Bradford says he asked the intruder to leave but he wouldn’t so that’s when Bradford says he “let him have it.”

Could something similar happen to you and your family when things start really getting crazy out there?

That is something to think about.

And even without a major emergency, food supplies in this country are already starting to get tighter.

But back in 1951, the size of the U.S. population was less than half of what it is today.

A few days ago, we learned that during the month of February the price of beef increased at the fastest pace since November 2003, and it is now at a new all-time record high.

Earlier today, one of my readers sent me the following photo. It shows a price of $24.32 for 0.695 pounds of beef tenderloin steak. This isn’t even prime rib…

And don’t think that you are just going to switch to pork either. A highly contagious virus known as “Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus” has killed more than 4 million pigs in the United States since last May, and it continues to spread rapidly. Experts acknowledge that this is going to drive up pork prices significantly as well.

In addition, the crippling California drought threatens to drive fruit and vegetable prices up to unprecedented levels. Below, I have posted a recent video news report about the drought. As you will notice, in this clip they use the term “Dust Bowl” to describe what many farmers fear may be happening…

So now is the time to get prepared while food prices are still relatively low.

They certainly aren’t going to go any lower than they are now.

To some, this type of talk is “gloom and doom”, but I do not believe that is the case at all. I believe that there is great hope in understanding what is happening and in getting prepared.

These sentiments were echoed by a Canadian prepper named Daisy Luther in one of her recent articles…

Preparedness: It means that whatever may come, you intend to not only grimly survive, but to thrive. It means that you foresee a day when the imminent threat, whatever that may be, diminishes, and you will rebuild. It means that you have taken responsibility for yourself and your family, and that you will not be forced to rely on others. It means that your mind is focused on life itself, not some imaginary life of some reality star that actually has no grasp on reality whatsoever. You have chosen not to be misguided by the lies that the media uses to pacify you.

Preparing yourself is the most optimistic and hopeful thing you can do in a world that would prefer to choose immediate gratification over a firm grasp on reality. Readying yourself to deal with whatever might happen is a joyful act, an expression of gratitude to the Creator, peace made tangible, and the personification of faith itself.